“A good day on the road is a good day. A bad day on the road is a good story.”
The RV Refrigerator Story
Many people romanticize the traveling lifestyle. Most of the time we 100% agree. There is nothing we would rather be doing. However, there have been a few “hiccups” in which life on the road has been difficult, frustrating and anger provoking. In every case, our worst experiences on the road have resulted from interactions with people and businesses who identify themselves as being “experts” in the RV world.
No matter how poor the interaction was, or however hideous the quality of their service, we will not identify real names of people or businesses. Every situation was resolved to be a success for us. Sometimes the resolution came easily; sometimes the resolution had to be accomplished “the hard way”. But a success none the less.
The purpose of our blog is to let you know real world things happen on the road. While most days are a wonderful, exciting adventure not every day on the road is sunshine and unicorns.
Speaking of a “good story”, let us tell you our story about replacing our four door Norcold electric/propane side-by-side refrigerator.
A Little Background
“Winnie”, our motorhome, is a 2011. In spite of Dave and I personalizing Winnie as a “living breathing” equal partner in our journey to explore the country, Winnie is mechanical.
No matter how well Winnie was made or how much routine maintenance is performed, mechanical things break and/or wear out. This is what happened when we had to replace our refrigerator.
The Death of the Refrigerator
Refrigerators wear out. There are mechanical parts and pieces. They are working in some capacity all of the time. Over the course of our married life in a stick and brick house we have replaced probably 2 or 3 refrigerators. Not really a big deal. We would go to a store, find a refrigerator we liked, pay for it in the store, have it delivered to our house and the delivery people would take the old one away. Easy.
It is a big deal in a motorhome. And there was nothing easy about this experience.
While spending a couple of months during the winter in a campground “south of I-10”, our four door Norcold electric/propane refrigerator stopped cooling.
Clarification: “South if I-10” means we were staying in the “warmest” part of the country during the coldest time of year. Pretty much anything below Interstate 10 (that runs east to west) will be reasonably temperate in climate.
RV Fridge or Residential?
When an RV fridge dies, there is always the question, “Do we replace the old fridge with an exact replacement or do we go with a residential fridge?” There are pros and cons either way.
RV fridges are much more expensive to purchase and they tend to be on the smaller capacity side. But they have an electric or propane feature that means your fridge can be on when you are rolling down the road or when you are boondocking.
Residential fridges are significantly less expensive, have way more options (like an ice maker in the door, something I really miss!) and tend to have a much larger capacity. They can run while you are going down the road, but rely on your inverter (battery power) to run the fridge when you are not plugged in. Also, sizing may become an issue if it’s not a direct replacement. Many times the refrigerator opening will need to be modified.
We like the electric or propane option. We decided on an exact replacement of our Norcold.
The Purchase
We are without a fridge, so time is of the essence to replace one! We bought two big coolers and put what food we could into those and kept buying ice and refiling the coolers.
We were in an unfamiliar area, but there were three RV dealerships in the area. Once we knew what we wanted, we made the rounds of visiting each dealership to check prices and get a feel of the quality of the service department. The whole process shouldn’t have been a very big deal, it was a simple “plug and play”.
Clarification: “Plug and play” means there was an exact replacement available. Take off the doors of the fridge, unscrew the braces, take the fridge out. Put the new fridge in, screw back in the braces, put the doors back on the fridge and let it cool!
The Decision
Of the three dealerships, one couldn’t get a replacement for 3 months and it would cost $8,500, installed. We would be 2,000 miles away in 3 months!!!!
The second dealerships could get us a fridge in 2 weeks at a cost of $8,000, installed.
The third dealership had one in stock at one of their sister dealerships. It could be in our town in 2 days and would cost $7,000, installed.
It seemed like a no brainer, fridge in 2 days and $1,000 less.
However, if we had known the third dealership (franchise) had just been purchased by new owners 2 months before, and that they had laid off all of the service technicians and hired new ones, we might have done something differently. The excellent reviews of the service department had been for the old crew. Not the new, inexperienced RV technicians.
It Didn’t Go So Well
Two days later, as instructed, we dropped Winnie off first thing in the morning and returned at 4:30 p.m. At 4:55 p.m. Winnie was ALMOST done, but the service manager would not authorize 10 minutes of overtime so Winnie could be finished properly.
Apparently, the new fridge was an exact plug and play EXCEPT for one factor, our old fridge had one plug for the whole fridge. The new fridge had two plugs, but only one outlet.
It was an easy fix. Replace the single outlet for a double outlet. Plug in the two plugs in the two outlets and we would be good to go.
When the service manager decided to not authorize the 10 minutes it would take to replace the single for a double outlet, the unexperienced technician found an old power strip hanging around the shop. He plugged the power strip into the one outlet and plugged the two fridge plugs into the old power strip. And the technician turned on the fridge to start cooling.
FIRE!!! FIRE!!!!!!
As we were being shuffled out the door at 5 p.m., we insisted on doing a walk around to make sure we were satisfied with the work, inside and out. I looked inside the RV and as Dave looked outside. As he started to open the outside panel door for the fridge he heard a loud snap and smelled smoke!!!!!!!!!!! He opened the panel and the power strip was on fire!!!!!!!! Dave pulled the sizzling power cord out and Winnie was saved!!!!!!
Five Minutes
That 5 minutes of not replacing the single outlet for a double outlet was oh so much more time consuming and oh so much more expensive.
To his credit, the service manager took responsibility for what happened. It would have been difficult for him to say it wasn’t their fault when we had the smoldering power strip in our hands.
That snap fried the electronic control board in every appliance in Winnie. The dealership ended up having to replace our washing machine, microwave/convection oven, inverter and converter.
Dave, an electrical engineer, spent 3 full days tracing through EVERY electrical system on Winnie, making sure there were no other issues. It was a tense, scary three days.
Dave supervised while the technicians replaced the washing machine and the microwave. And while the dealership purchased the new inverter and converter, Dave installed them. No technician at that dealership would ever touch Winnie again. Needless to say, we WILL NOT be placing this business in our Special Places & Recommendations page!!
Take-away Points
While this whole process was expensive and very scary, this is life on the road. Not every day on the road is sunshine and unicorns. We still believe a bad day on the road is better than a good day in a stick and brick house. It wasn’t the end of the world. Winnie is fine now. And that is all that matters.
Be resilient. And travel with an electrical engineer!
Your partners in travel,
Kathryn, Dave and Lucky
RVing Nomads
It’s a lifestyle
Thank you so much for reading this blog. If you enjoyed the content, please check out other blogs at:
https://rvingnomads.com
https://relationshipsrelearned.com
To be notified of future posts, please enter your email address and click on the Subscribe button.
If you haven’t checked out our Special Places & Recommendations page, please do so. If you are in these areas, you may find these places as enjoyable and rewarding as we did!